Editorial - General Assembly has wrong remedy for schools

Wednesday

May 8, 2013 at 9:50 PM

Raleigh's solution: Improve public schools by taking away their tools

The achievement gap is not only still with us, it has gotten larger. Worse, the Honorables in Raleigh are poised to severely limit access to good-quality pre-kindergarten programs, which numerous studies have shown to be among the most valuable tools to ensure that all students start school ready to succeed.Reporter Pressley Baird looked at the achievement gap in New Hanover County, which has grown as racially and socioeconomically segregated schools have grown over the past two decades. Black children lag well behind their white, middle-class counterparts at almost every level, but race cannot be disconnected from socioeconomics here. The gap is not just racial – regardless of race, children eligible to receive free or reduced-price lunches are more likely to score lower on standardized tests than their more affluent counterparts.Our schools obviously need to do better at educating all students, but the people who set policy are making it more difficult for teachers to do the job. Racially and socioeconomically segregated “neighborhood schools,” budget cuts and legislative efforts to cut preschool slots are among the barriers facing children and teachers in high-poverty schools.The New Hanover County Board of Education and many state lawmakers cling to the foolish hope that concentrating poor and minority children into a few schools will somehow improve the performance, even as study after study shows how hard it is for a high-poverty school to meet state and federal proficiency standards.Understandably, many parents prefer that their students attend school close to home. But our housing patterns continue to be segregated by race and class, and schools have become highly segregated – and inherently unequal. Not surprisingly, one can look at the free and reduced-price lunch statistics and make a very accurate assessment of which schools do the best and which perform the worst on standardized tests.As an added bonus, the Honorables are on their way to making it even more difficult for children from disadvantaged backgrounds to have a fighting chance at graduating. The House this week passed ill-conceived legislation that would limit eligibility for state-funded preschool programs to families with income at or below the federal poverty level. The result will mean fewer children who are truly at risk of falling behind will be able to take advantage of the program.Oh, they've amended the bill to allow the state to increase that threshold to 130 percent of the poverty level – the amount Gov. Pat McCrory wants to fund – if money and slots are available. Their reasoning is best summed up by the comments of one Guilford Count lawmaker: “It's a thing we wish we didn't have to do. But at the same time ... this just brings the qualifications into line with the money that's available.”But at what cost to North Carolina's future?These are the very lawmakers who claim they want to improve public education but who so far have done virtually everything possible to take away tools our schools need to succeed. Yet they now expect these public schools to do a better job without one tool numerous studies have said makes a significant difference in academic performance in the early grades, which set the bar for whether a student makes it to graduation.Meanwhile, they want to siphon funds from these schools to allow students from families making up to 300 percent of the poverty level to attend private schools that have no accountability to state taxpayers – three times the income limit for preschool eligibility. In short, they are setting up our schools up to fail even as they expect more from them, and they are setting up many North Carolina children to fail.That's irresponsible.